I believe copyleft is harmful to the free culture movement

But it isn't *your* work.

The code I write is my work. I reuse works from others. I invite other to reuse mine, as long as they then respect the freedoms of their users. I refuse to help such unethical developers. I do not tolerate intolerance.

I thought that's the point of software freedom/free culture.

The point of software freedom is to be in control of your computing. Copylefted or not, free software licenses allow to use, study, modify and redistribute the program. They give the users the individual and the collective control over the software. Being allowed to subjugate users at a lower cost, by reusing the works done by others, is not the point. It is what the copyleft prohibits.

But how is it supposed to do that?

By not helping proprietary software developers. If they want the features of copylefted software, they have to rewrite it from scratch. If, instead, the software is permissively licenced, they get it gratis.

There is still much proprietary software one has to look out for.

So what? Because there is much proprietary software, we should help their developers with our work? That is the difference between pushover and copylefted licenses.

People can only be free if they make a conscious choice to do so.

With pushover licenses, any tiny feature proprietary software developers add on top of the program make the resulting user-subjugating derivative technically-better than the free original. Why should freedom come with technically-worse software? With the copyleft, there is no such problem.

But what else is there to defend them from?

From the attractiveness of a technically-better but nonfree program that was released at a lower cost, reusing permissively-licensed software.

I assumed a major goal of the movement was the abolition of copyright.

Abolishing the copyright on software would only be good if the authors would be forced to release the source code. Not only the binary.

Big cultural changes are needed to get to that point.

Indeed. A campaign to abolish the copyright law coud have been successful in the 19th century. Nowadays, a good way to fight against those abusing users with their copyrights is to produce better works and to not let them reuse our works for their evil objectives. The copyleft takes care of the latter.

Copyleft, combined with this 'protection' mindset, gives free software advocates a reason to resist change in that direction.

Authors do not opt for the copyleft to gain personal advantage but to defend the freedoms of their public. With a hypothetical abolition of the copyright (and the mandatory release of the corresponding source, also under no copyright), there would be no attack on their freedoms anymore. All free software advocates, *including* those who distribute their works under copylefted licenses, would definitely sign for such an abolition... which is very far from appearing on the political agenda of any country.

Your speech is purely theoretical. Mine is not. Imagine you are Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum. You have developed a kernel for many years. Essentially nobody uses what you directly distribute. However a big company took your hard work, wrote a backdoor on top of it, and burned the whole thing in billions of processors. Do you really think it was a good idea to help that company? To choose a pushover license?

But how is it supposed to do that?
It only affects derivative works.

This is a misunderstanding. The GPL ensures that the fundamental freedoms to use, share, study, and modify the software remain intact even when distributing exact copies. Copyright law grants exclusive rights to both distribution and modification. Because the GPL leverages copyright, it applies to both modified versions (GPLv3 Section 5) and unmodified copies (GPLv3 Section 4) of the software. Additionally, non-source distributions, whether modified or not, must be accompanied by the corresponding source code (GPLv3 Section 6).

"I thought that's the point of software freedom/free culture.
It belongs to everyone."

Adding on to what Magic Banana said, you're on the right track! Here's the thing about licenses like the GPL: they don't stop people from being able to use, change or share the software, but they do stop them from taking away the freedoms you mentioned. Think of it like a park. Everyone can come in and enjoy the playground, have a picnic, or just relax. That's the "freedom" part. But what the GPL does is prevent someone from putting a fence around the park and denying others. Continuing with what Magic Banana said, if someone wants to restrict people they'll have to build their own park. We can't use copyleft to stop that, since copyleft can only go as far as copyright does, but we can at least deny them using our own efforts to build our own park against us by coming along after the fact and building the fence. (They basically get the park for free at that point, since we already built it.)

"I assumed a major goal of the movement was the abolition of copyright.
I don't dispute that copyright might have been helpful in the past.
But I am talking about the present."

Copyright isn't the enemy - proprietary software is. In the case of proprietary software, copyright restricts users. That's definitely not what the free software movement is about. But even without copyright, a developer could withhold source code and still make the software proprietary, so eliminating copyright doesn't help the free software movement win. That's focusing on the wrong point.

Here's where things get interesting: strong copyleft licenses, like the GPL, actually leverage copyright to protect software freedom. They guarantee users the right to run, modify, and share the software, ensuring it stays open and accessible.

Now, imagine a utopian world where all software is free, and there's no more proprietary software. In that scenario, maybe copyleft licenses wouldn't be strictly necessary. But until then, they're a crucial defense mechanism.

Abolishing copyright altogether would actually hurt the free software movement. The GPL's power comes from its ability to enforce those core freedoms through copyright. Without that legal framework, those fence builders I mentioned would move in, and we'd have no way to stop them. Sure, we could still vocally complain and walk around with signs - and we already do that today too - but we'd lose the legal option that we have today.

Sure we could go build a new park, since the fence builders took over our old park and pushed us out, and then watch them come along and build a fence around our new one, too. Then we could build a third park, and let the process repeat itself. Until one gets tired of building parks and says that maybe people shouldn't be allowed to build fences around them - and starts looking into the legal options. This is when copyleft becomes valuable. And, as long as the fence builders exist, things like the GPL will continue to be good ways to stop them. Plus, please help to convince the fence builders to do socially better things than build fences i.e., help encourage them to make free software. Maybe that will help move us closer to a world where no one builds fences anymore and then we don't need to have legal mechanisms in place against fences, if no one makes them anymore.